Books of The Times; A Strong Gay Dissent On Public Spectacles

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A Place at the Table The Gay Individual in American Society By Bruce Bawer 269 pages. Poseidon Press. $21.

Bruce Bawer, a cultural critic, is disturbed by the message he says militant gay-rights demonstrators send to the public with their exhibitionist and confrontational activities. As he points out in his eloquent new book, "A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society," spectacles like Gay Pride Day parades, with some marchers in drag or wearing weighted nipple rings and their sometimes implicit advocacy of sexual promiscuity, project a false and damaging message of what it means to be homosexual.

Such rituals, he writes, imply that to be gay is to be a person limited by one's sexuality, to be defined by what one does instead of what one is. They suggest that the culture of homosexuality is less diverse than that of heterosexuality, whereas in fact, he insists, gay people are just as diverse as heterosexuals are.

Worse, he argues, the spectacle that this militant subculture presents makes self-awareness all the more difficult for young homosexuals struggling to accept their identity. And worst of all, these militants give fuel and reassurance to homosexuals' enemies, who use the projected distortions to reinforce their bigotry.

But lest any gay-basher take comfort from Mr. Bawer's denunciations, it should be added at once that he is even harsher on those who condemn homosexuality. In fact, in his view, the subculture he deplores was largely created in response to a form of anti-gay bias that through fear, ignorance and hypocrisy has led to a caricature of homosexuality as a life style practiced by choice, to use a few of the many terms that the author defines as staples of the anti-gay lexicon.

Mr. Bawer sees the essence of the anti-homosexual outlook in President Bush's declaration to an interviewer that while he would feel compassion and love for a grandchild who confessed to him that he or she was gay, he would hope "you wouldn't become an advocate for a life style that in my view is not normal." In other words, be a homosexual but don't act like one or tell anyone. Such confusion, Mr. Bawer concludes, makes people lie about their homosexuality with more damaging results than if they told the truth.

So sensitive and articulate is the case he makes that you almost wish it were invulnerable to criticism. Unfortunately, Mr. Bawer leaves himself open to dispute by sometimes twisting the logic of those he disagrees with, by relying too heavily on his own dogma and by failing to come to grips with some fundamental issues.

For instance, in asserting that people have no choice about their sexual orientation, he compares being gay or not to being left- or right-handed. He seems to mean by this that homosexuality is always inherited (although there are those who argue that left-handedness is acquired), yet he never cites any evidence on this still hotly debated issue. Nor does he indicate what sort of research he did. He offers such an unequivocal view of people that you are forced to think that he's talking about himself and a few of his friends and making no allowances for the infinite shadings of human behavior.

For instance, in anatomizing bias against gay people, he trivializes anything that has troubled people about homosexuality throughout history by reducing the reasons for their objections to ignorance about what it is like to be gay and to insecurity about their own sexual identities. Nowhere does he confront the question of reproduction. In arguing away the Bible's so-called prohibitions, he never considers God's instruction in Genesis to "be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." A good case might be made that homosexual couples can bring up children just as effectively as heterosexual ones, but the fundamental issues must be confronted, not wished away, if the fears of anti-gay people are ever to be allayed.

Similarly, in advocating legal homosexual marriage, Mr. Bawer states that "marriage is recognized by the state not because some religions consider it a sacrament but because it reinforces civilized values by enhancing the reliability of workers and the stability of homes." Such a raison d'etre for marriage seems a grimly nonidealistic view of what "civilized values" add up to.

All the same, "A Place at the Table" remains an intelligent and eye-opening book. At the very least, it should be read as the autobiography of someone who smashes the common stereotypes of gay people to smithereens. Mr. Bawer is deeply conservative in his tastes and values: he has written cultural criticism for The Wall Street Journal, The New Criterion and (until it censored him) The American Spectator, and he strongly advocates monogamous love and commitment.

And the book clarifies much that is only dimly understood about the cliches of gay life, like bath-house promiscuity, the reasons for and limitations of some so-called gay sensibilities (what makes Judy Garland and grand opera appealing) and the psychology of the gay elite.

Moreover, "A Place at the Table" offers homespun instruction to young people who are on the brink of facing their identities. Mr. Bawer sums up what he sees as the best message for young gay people in the 1990's by citing a novel he greatly admires, "The Charioteer," by Mary Renault. In his paraphrase: "Don't ask for a medal; don't feel sorry for yourself. Being gay is an inconvenience; so are a lot of things; get on with it; if others have a problem with it, that's their problem. Above all, don't use your homosexuality or their contempt for it as an excuse to lower your moral standards. The important thing is to behave in such a way as to keep your own respect and that of people whose respect means something."